Security guard charged with video voyeurism at Coral Gables home during his shift

August 19, 2010|Tania Valdemoro, The Miami Herald

Coral Gables — It's hard to be a security guard and a peeping tom at the same time.

That's what police say Eric Michael Owens of Miami found out last Sunday when he was called to a home in the Old Cutler Bay neighborhood to help a family who reported spotting an intruder in the middle of the night.

The security guard got into hot water after Coral Gables police arrived and questioned Owens, whose story did not add up, they said.

The intruder was Owens, police said.

Coral Gables police arrested him later Sunday morning. He is accused of entering the home and taking photos with his cellphone of an unidentified 17-year-old girl as she was undressing.

The incident wasn't the first time Owens, a security guard for G4S Secure Solutions USA, formerly known as Wackenhut, had taken photos of the teenager, he later confessed.

And it wasn't the first time Owens was charged with the same offense. He was convicted in 2004 in California for peeping into someone's home. That same year, Owens was also convicted of ``disorderly conduct'' -- a misdemeanor -- and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps, which he joined in 2001.

Coral Gables police charged Owens, 28, with two felonies -- two counts of burglary -- and three misdemeanors -- two counts of video voyeurism and one count of providing false information to police.

According to Sgt. Janette Frevola, a spokeswoman for the Coral Gables Police Department, this is what happened:

Owens was on his Sunday shift when he entered a Coral Gables home and took photos of the unidentified 17-year-old girl as she was undressing. Frevola said she did not know how the security guard entered the property.

At one point, the girl noticed someone with a cellphone.

She screamed.

About 2:48 a.m., another person in the house called the security guard at the front gate of Old Cutler Bay, and the guard asked Owens, who was on a roving patrol, to check it out. Frevola would not identify the address of the house or the victim.

Owens came to the house and spoke with the girl's parents, telling them police were on their way. By 3:32 a.m., when police had not shown up, the family called the Coral Gables Police Department.

Officers arrived and questioned Owens, whose story did not match the accounts of other people. Meanwhile, Owens' phone was missing. Police later found it after searching the neighborhood. It contained images of the teenage girl.

Officers took Owens to the station for questioning. He confessed to the crime -- and to taking photos of the same teenager two weeks earlier, police said.

``The officers did an excellent job of putting all the pieces together while it was happening,'' Frevola said.

Owens was released Monday. Meanwhile, he is out of a job.

``G4S takes these matters very seriously and is committed to upholding the highest standards of honesty and professionalism and to preserving the trust of the public and our clients. . . . Upon learning of Mr. Owens' recent conduct, G4S immediately terminated Owens' employment,'' a company statement said.

Monica Lewman-Garcia, a G4S spokeswoman, said the company had conducted a preemployment background check before hiring Owens in 2008.

Yet, until Owens' bond hearing Monday, G4S did not know he had been convicted of peeping into an inhabited dwelling in California in 2004, she said.